-The Hindu Data also show that a majority of the farmers were unaware of the Minimum Support Price regime Between 2013 and 2019, the share of agricultural households (HHs) that sold their produce in APMC mandis reduced sharply, while those that sold their produce to private traders increased significantly. Data show that a majority of the farmers were unaware of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) programme and procurement agencies. Among those who...

-Down to Earth Farmers in general satisfied with return from local sale, but a significant percentage of them get lower than market price The majority of Indian farmers sell their produce in local markets, the 77th round of the National Sample Survey by the National Statistical Office titled Land and livestock holdings of households and situation assessment of agricultural households has found. Government agencies and Agricultural Produce Market Committees account for an...

-Down to Earth Andhra, Telangana have highest percentage of agricultural households under debt; Average debt: Rs 2.45 lakh in Andhra More than half of India’s agricultural households were in debt, with an average outstanding of Rs 74,121, according to the latest ‘Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land Holdings of Households in Rural India, 2019’ released September 10, 2021. The percentage of households in debt, however, reduced slightly from 51.9 per cent as...

Remote teaching and learning promoted by Edtech companies as an alternative to physical classrooms, especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, may have a sizeable consumer base in our country. However, at the bottom of the pyramid, there are only a few takers of online education. In reality, class and caste-divide, which is more prominent in rural areas, affects access to digital learning. The majority of the school going...

-Livemint.com Beset by poor technology access and ineffective online classes, students from poor households have lost reading abilities significantly, suggests a new survey covering 15 states. The losses are much more stark for students from marginalized communities With most Indian schools shut for the past year and a half, children from poor households, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds, are rapidly forgetting what they had learned before the pandemic, new survey data suggests. Less...